Jesse Goolsby - I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

For a moment everything stops save the girl, standing still, turning the soccer ball in her hands, her small hands on the ball. They scope her and she turns the ball. Quiet.

Then, in one fluid motion, she drops the ball and sprints at the men, arms up in a V.

“Estaad sho yaa saret fayr meykunam!”

“One-twenty-five,” Torres says. “One-ten. Fuck.” A pause. “One hundred. Your fucking shot, Dax. Now. Now.”

Big Dax sees the girl growing bigger and bigger; his weapon’s crosshairs meet on her expanding chest. Torres’s gun bursts and the girl still runs in long strides, uninjured.

Big Dax takes a quick breath and holds this afternoon, this moment, this white shawl, pink pants, glinting chest, bare feet. He fires.

Wintric exhales and squeezes the trigger.

The girl falls down, curled, and they hear the rifles’ simultaneous report and smell the gunpowder and heat. Then quiet. No wind now. No talk. Everything has been swallowed. The girl’s body jolts on the road, legs kicking, the soles of her bare feet exposed in the afternoon. Her legs jolt again, then still. Her bare feet. One heel digging at the road, then still. All quiet. Not calm. Quiet.

DAX FLIES TO Salt Lake City, rents a car, and drives past the salt flats, Bonneville, the state border, past Wendover and Wells, to Elko, Nevada. Alston, as lean as he was in high school but now sporting a shaved head and a Janelle tattoo on his left forearm, greets Dax in front of his mobile home on half an acre on the south side of town.

“First off,” he says, “you’re still a big son of a bitch. Second, Janelle stayed up in Idaho, and there’s nothing more to say about that. Third, I’m gonna let you talk about the war. Get it all out. No one’s listening out here. Let’s go inside and get to the tough shit first.”

Framed prints of large bucks and antelope hang on the walls inside. A dusty but clean smell hangs in the room, as if it’s been recently vacuumed.

“Elko’s got water and gold,” Alston says over beers. “You don’t need anything else. Listen, a lot of people are going to freak the fuck out about losing their homes, losing their jobs, all that bullshit. Just wait. I don’t feel sorry for them one bit. What do you expect, living in San Francisco or L.A.? You gonna spend a million bucks on a two-bedroom fixer? Big cities, they’re not taking anything out of the ground that people want. Of course you gonna eventually be screwed. We got water and gold. Other places have one or the other. We got both. I’m never leaving. I paid one-fifty for this house. It’s worth three hundred, easy. Okay, that was the icebreaker. Talk to me, man. Are you fucked up in the head? Are the movies true? You got all of your limbs, right?”

Alston pauses long enough for a sip.

“Talk to me, man. Look at your fucking forearms. What’d you do? I’m not joking, Dax. I want you to talk. All these guys and gals come back and they all say that they got no one to talk to, no one’s gonna listen. I believe them. No one wants to hear the stories. Who has happy stories? You don’t even have to go to war. No one has happy stories. Good jobs here, but where’s the gold going? You’d think we’d keep a couple chunks for ourselves, but trucks leave every night at 2 A.M.headed for somewhere that’s not here, digging the gold, killing the mountains, dumping it in the trucks and hauling it away. Listen, I don’t ask too many questions, but why is gold so damn important? Who’s wearing gold these days? It’s all platinum. Janelle wore gold. She loved that shit, but only with the turquoise in it. So fucking weird. No one makes the gold with the turquoise in it, it’s all silver and turquoise, everyone knows that, but she loved the fucking gold and turquoise, which you can never find. Why? Because it looks like shit, that’s why. And this thing on my arm? Best idea I ever had. Do you know how many girls I meet that see that tat but no wedding ring? It’s amazing. They’ll come up and say, ‘Was Janelle your mom?’ And you know what I say? ‘Hell yes she was my mom, bless her goddamned soul.’ They see that loyalty and it’s pants-off time. Afterward we’ll be laying there and they’ll be stroking the fucking tattoo, and I know what they’re thinking—‘This guy loves his mama. This guy’s a keeper.’ And what do I say? Nothing. That’s what I say. You’re in Elko, Dax.”

Another sip.

“Shit, it’s good to see you, man. I want you to talk. I’m gonna sit here and listen. You don’t want to say shit, fine, just tell me, but this is your chance, my friend. You can’t go on no documentary and say no one wanted to listen. I’m listening. Please. I’ll listen.”

“I don’t know, A,” Dax says. “I feel good. Weird to be out, though.”

“Sure.”

“I hate having to decide what to wear every day. Don’t have to think about that while you’re in. I thought I’d love it, but it’s a pain in the ass.”

“Freedom,” Alston says. “Fucking overrated.”

“I’m good,” Dax says. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You a smoker now. I smell it on you. You ever have to stick the cigs in your nose like those dudes in Nam?”

“I don’t know,” Dax says.

Silence while Alston leans back in his chair, eyes wide, then leans forward.

“Come on, man. Give me something. Give me the best and worst. We’ll clear that shit out and go lose some money.”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“Nowhere to be. Think, but not too much. You don’t get to the stuff I’m talking about by thinking.”

“Boring shit,” Dax says. “There’s no best or worst.”

“Give them to me. I’ll take them. Make it up. You got to talk about it.”

“That’s not true.”

“That is true. It’ll eat you, man.”

Dax exhales and glances at the wall.

“You a deer hunter or something now?” he says. “What’s up with the bucks?”

“You forget how smart I am. You’re not changing the subject.”

“You got all these deer on the walls, A. You’re from Rutherford. Where’s the mounted head? In the bedroom?”

“Stop that shit. Nobody’s from anywhere. And you’ll talk. I got too much beer for you not to talk.”

“You’re a gold miner now,” Dax says. “You got one of those lights on your helmet?”

“Those are for coal miners, you dumbass. And I sure as shit ain’t no gold miner. Bail bonds, man. Easy money. Dumbest fucks in forever.”

“You haven’t been in the army.”

“Who do you think my customers are, Mormons?”

“Buddy of mine is one,” Dax says. “Loved it when he said fuck. He got out too.”

“Where?”

“Colorado.”

“Same as here. All about gold. When it dries up, no more Colorado. We got gambling and water. That’ll keep some folks around.”

“Where we going?” asks Dax. “I saw the casino lights coming in.”

“Good tables or girls?”

“Both.”

“Where do you think you are?”

“Pick a place where we can win you a stuffed buck.”

Four hundred up after a three-hour session at the poker table, Dax waits in the casino bar’s corner booth for Alston to return with drinks. Alston promised him something “old school,” and Dax senses a root root in his future.

The Eagles play from a hidden speaker and Dax stares at a woman sitting in profile at the center of the bar. Her blond hair is cut shoulder length and her legs could reach the floor if she extended them, but she has her heels on the low rung of the stool. She’s kept her jacket on, giving the impression that she could leave at any moment, but she’s only two sips into her latest drink.

Near drunk, Dax wants another gulp in him before he walks over to her. He pictures his smooth approach, her eyes rising to meet his, her instant attraction. He’s never gained a woman’s interest with just a look, but his roll on the poker table, the drinks, the “just home from war” angle, and “Take It Easy” have him feeling good. He fantasizes that she has a place nearby, that he won’t have to take her back to Alston’s.